Veteran US civil rights activist Reverend Jesse Jackson, one of the nation’s most influential Black voices, died peacefully Tuesday morning, his family said in a statement. He was 84.
Jackson, a Baptist minister, had been a civil rights leader since the 1960s, when he marched with Martin Luther King Jr. and helped fundraise for the cause.
The family did not release a cause of death, but Jackson revealed in 2017 that he had the degenerative neurological disease Parkinson’s.
He was hospitalized for observation in November in connection to another neurodegenerative condition, according to media reports.
A dynamic orator and a successful mediator in international disputes, the long-time Baptist minister expanded the space for African Americans on the national stage for more than six decades.
He was the most prominent Black person to run for the US presidency — with two unsuccessful attempts to capture the Democratic Party nomination in the 1980s — until Barack Obama took the office in 2009.
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